


if you fall in love in a forest and no one is around to see, does it count?

by ThePrettyTomboy



Series: Catradora Week [2]
Category: She-Ra and the Princesses of Power (2018)
Genre: Angst, F/F, Kissing, Snowball Fight, Tumblr: Catradora Week 2018
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-11
Updated: 2019-01-11
Packaged: 2019-10-08 09:55:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,222
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17384312
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ThePrettyTomboy/pseuds/ThePrettyTomboy
Summary: The Whispering Woods have a way of bringing people together.Written for Catradora Week day three, Season | Moon and Sun.





	if you fall in love in a forest and no one is around to see, does it count?

**Author's Note:**

> I'm skipping day two, will eventually come back to it.

The Whispering Woods have a way of bringing people together.

At least, that’s how it seems to Catra as she stands here, deep in the middle of the dead forest, shin-deep in snow, glaring more icicles at Adora than are hanging from the fingerlike branches of the towering trees. “What are  _you_ doing here?”

Adora has her sword drawn, eyes colder than the wind that whips her ponytail around her head. “You shouldn’t be here.”

Catra brandishes her claws. “Yeah, well, I am.” Her tail twitches behind her, flicks left, flicks right, poised to attack at the slightest provocation. “Where’re your friends?”

Adora’s hands tighten on the hilt of the sword. “They’re around.” Her mouth turns down at the corner, the same as it always does when she’s lying. Flakes of snow begin falling from the dull grey sky, settling into Adora’s hair like a crown of powdered jewels.

Catra resists the vestigial urge to tackle Adora to the ground and examine the flakes that gather on her eyelashes.

“You should go.” Honorable as ever. Adora skirts around Catra, never turning her back, sword held out to keep the distance between them. She backs toward the towering crystalline structure that rises out of the forest, touches the door and whispers, “Eternia.” As if knowing the password would do Catra any good.

Catra remains where she is in the snow until the door snaps closed over Adora’s face, twisted with regret. As soon as she’s out of sight, Catra leaps into the treetops, which no longer have the foliage to conceal her presence. It doesn’t matter, anyway. Getting noticed is the whole point.  


* * *

  
Adora emerges from the ruin. She tucks a familiar glowing red crystal into her jacket and calls into the cold. “Swift Wind!” For several minutes, she stands in the snow, arms wrapped around her body, but neither neigh nor whoosh of wings herald his presence. Adora grumbles and kicks her way through the snow. It’s deeper than when she entered the ruin.

Catra follows through the trees, distinctly aware of the sound of branches groaning beneath her weight, amplified by the stillness of the woods.

One branch cracks as Catra leaps away, echoing through trees, and Adora whips around and shoots a laser from the tip of her sword, burning the limb that Catra perches on clean through and sending it crashing to the forest floor in a heap of powdery snow.

Catra barely manages to catch a different branch and swing around into a comfortable perch. “Watch it!”

“I _knew_ you were following me.”

Catra scoffs. “Uh, _duh_. You didn’t think I was going to give up that easily, did you?” She drops from her branch and lands on all fours, fingers squeezing around the snow to form a compact ball of ice in her hands. “Hand over the crystal.”

“Or what?”

“Or this,” Catra replies, flicking the loose topcoat of snow up into Adora’s eyes with her tail and following up with a tightly-packed snowball.

Adora deflects the attack with her sword-turned-shield. “Did you really think it would be that easy to distract—” She can’t even complete her sentence before Catra ducks underneath the shield and tackles her to the ground. Some urges can’t be ignored.

Catra straddles Adora’s waist, pins Adora’s wrists to the chilly snow beneath them. If Adora was trying to escape, her brute strength would be more than enough to overpower Catra. That she doesn’t speaks to how predictable they’ve become to each other, even if the tenderness they once felt has frozen over. Catra holds her tongue, something she’s learning to do more and more often as she adjusts to her new position as Hordak’s second in command, and allows Adora to fill in the blanks however she likes.

“Let me go,” Adora says, but without the sanctimonious conviction her voice usually holds. In its place is something more tremulous, more questioning. Hopeful.

Catra pretends to think on the demand, rolls her eyes toward the grey sky and hums a pensive ditty. A smirk graces her lips and she turns her eyes back down to Adora, one eyebrow cocked. “I don’t think so.”

Adora shifts her weight, and before Catra can make any futile attempt to resist, she rolls the two of them over. Encouragingly, she doesn’t follow up with a punch, doesn’t follow up with harsh words. Doesn’t even get up and leave Catra shivering in the snow like she no doubt knows she should. Instead, she closes her eyes and sighs. “We can’t keep doing this.”

“Yeah,” Catra answers, her voice just a hair more breathless than she’s willing to admit. “It’s really cold out here.”

“That’s not…” Adora trails off when she catches the mischief written in Catra’s face. “Go home. I don’t want to fight.” She still doesn’t let go. Her bright blue eyes pierce into Catra’s own, searching for the remnants of the girl she grew up fighting alongside. She must find something she’s looking for. “You could come with me.”

Silence stretches between them, punctuated by the whistle of the wind through the trees and the far off crunching of footsteps through the snow, probably some of the unfortunate displaced denizens of the forest. Their breath fills the whim of air that separates their lips, which pull closer together like two celestial bodies on a collision course.

Catra is the one to close the distance. Her eyes drift closed, her lips fall open, and she meets the warmth of Adora’s mouth with too much enthusiasm. These days, vulnerability is a risk she rarely takes.

Adora returns the kiss, like they aren’t loyal to warring factions, like the years of resentment have melted away. Like there’s a chance. The moment stretches on into an eternity, and somewhere along the line Adora’s hands lose track of Catra’s wrists, find themselves buried somewhere in the mass of snow-covered hair like it will anchor her to this reality.

Catra is the one to push away. She props herself up on her elbows, the armor around her heart clattering back into place.

Adora clambers to her feet, dazed, maybe, or at least unsure what to make of this relapse. “Come with me.”

“We’ve been over this.” Catra staggers, her limbs locking up from the cold, before she finds the strength to leap into the nearest tree’s branches. “Bye Adora.” She takes off across the trees, almost hoping that Adora will get it in her head that she should follow. Almost disappointed when she doesn’t. Catra doesn’t stop until she reaches the skiff at the edge of the Whispering Woods, manned by Scorpia.

“Did ya get it?” Scorpia asks, chipper as ever.

Catra pulls the crystal out of her belt, the one Adora tried to hide in her jacket as if Catra didn’t know exactly how to get her hands on it.

Scorpia chatters as she takes off, back into the desert toward the Fright Zone, asks too many questions, unsuccessfully pries for details.

The desert thaws Catra’s bones until she can stretch without too much pain, but the heat doesn’t reach deep enough to melt the protective ice that separates her lingering tenderness for an old friend from her mission. The Whispering Woods have a way of bringing people together, but the war that killed the trees has mastered tearing people apart.


End file.
